Question

1. A person is seated in the rear of a motorhome (they have their seatbelt on) and notices a ball on the floor. The floor is initially sitting still relative to the person and then begins to roll toward the front of the motorhome. Give two possible explanations for the motion and a way to determine which is correct.

Answer 1

Hi,

in this specific problem a lot depends on the style of the flooring of the motorhome(which is not mentioned) for ex. if the flooring has grooves or is completly flat.

so lets try to analyse the situation for the flat flooring, now as the person has seatbelt on and what he/she observes is the ball rolling forward, there can be two reasons for this movement:

1)there is a break applied to the vehicle due to which the inertia of the ball forces it to move forward.

2)there is a downward slope (in the road) because of which the ball moves forward.

a possible way to check the correct reason in using spirit level.

but a better way is to keep track of the speed of the vehicle if there is not much change in the velocity of the vehicle then the possibility of (2) is likely but the change in velocity(de-acceleration) means (1) is likely.

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